The Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s emergency request to allow his executive order on mail-in ballot restrictions on Sept. 14. His executive order stated that election officials needed to submit lists of ballot recipients and restrict those not on the list from mailing in their ballot.
The lower courts paused President Trump’s executive order while working to decide its lawfulness. Trump requested the Supreme Court lift the pause to allow his restrictions to go into effect for the upcoming election while the courts make their decision, which the Supreme Court denied.
The vote-by-mail process for the upcoming election has not changed due to the Supreme Court action.
The U.S. Postal Service worked to issue rules to carry out Trump’s executive order. USPS would reject any mail-in ballots that do not meet the executive order’s requirements, according to the California Department of Justice.
The approved ballot envelopes would have specific tracking barcodes. Trump and his administration said the order was put in place to prevent voting and election fraud, according to the Congressional Research Service Report.
San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Elaina Cano explained how the parts of the system would have worked.
“USPS would compare the actual ballot mailing against the information submitted through that system,” she said. “If an outgoing federal ballot mailing did not meet the required standards or did not correspond with the information submitted through the portal, USPS could have declined to accept that mailing and returned it to the election official for correction.”
Some Supreme Court justices believed the executive order came too late in the election season.
“State and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion.
Still, some students say they want clearer guidance. Lily Jaffe, a political science sophomore, is an out-of-state voter and was concerned about how changes to mail-in voting could affect her plans.
“I feel like we just need more clarification for ways to verify registration and ways to vote,” Jaffe said.
Cano said her office can help educate voters, and she advised voters to take a few steps to make sure their ballots are counted.
She emphasized the importance of checking that voter registration information is current, especially for students who moved for school, and making sure the ballot mailing address is their current residence.
“If returning a ballot by mail, we strongly encourage voters not to wait until Election Day and to mail it as early as possible,” Cano said.
Cano also encourages students to sign up for California’s “Where’s My Ballot?” service. It sends notifications when a ballot is mailed, when it is expected to arrive, when the county receives the returned ballot, and whether it was accepted or has an issue that needs to be corrected.
Miles Cook, a business administration sophomore, said he was relieved that mail-in voting will work the same way it has before.
“I just think that having mail-in voting that is consistent is really important because it can make it more accessible and easier for everybody to vote fairly,” Cook said.